Carrie Underwood takes home top Christian song at 2015 Billboard Music Awards

Carrie Underwood took home Top Christian Song honors at the 2015 Billboard Music Awards on Sunday night.

Underwood has never been shy about publicly expressing her Christian faith, and “Something in the Water” talks about the importance of baptism and conversion as a means to changing your life: “There’s somebody saying what I’m saying to you / Opened my eyes and told me truth / He said just a little faith and it’ll all get better / So I followed that preacher man down to the river and now I’m changed / And now I’m stronger.” The song ends with Underwood singing part of “Amazing Grace.”

“It’s really kind of a joyous, uplifting song about changing your life for the better and kind of having that ‘a-ha’ moment, to waking up and your life being different from that moment forward,” Underwood says.

It’s rare for a song with such an overt Christian theme to find its way to the mainstream, but “Something in the Water” has become not only one of the biggest hits of the year, it’s also Underwood’s longest-running No. 1 song to date. Songwriter Chris DeStefano tells Taste of Country it was obvious the song was special from the outset.

“It’s very humbling to be part of it,” DeStefano relates. “One of the things that’s been really exciting for me — I know it sounds crazy — is just reading tweets, and seeing how it’s affecting people directly. You’re able to really see people’s emotions as they’re writing on Twitter. It’s incredible that it’s having such a powerful effect on people. As a songwriter, that is all you can hope for, is to affect people and touch people, and make a difference in their lives, in small ways and big ways."